January 2010 Newsletter

Meditation Newsletter

January 2010

"A disciple lets his mind pervade one quarter of the world with thoughts of unselfish joy, and so the second, and so the third, and so the fourth. And thus the whole wide world, above, below, around, everywhere and equally, he continues to pervade with a heart of unselfish joy, abundant, grown great, measureless, without hostility or ill-will."

- The Buddha in the Pali Canon.

Begin the New Year with Meditation

The next session of our online meditation course begins on Saturday, January 23rd, 2010.

We've been offering online meditation courses since 1997 and they have proven helpful to meditators in many countries, and of many faiths and none, around the world. The course serves as a practical introduction to samatha (tranquillity or serenity) and vipassana (insight) techniques from the Theravada tradition of Buddhism. Intended primarily for beginners, the 90 day course is also suitable for experienced meditators who wish to explore different aspects of the tradition. The emphasis is on building a sustainable and balanced meditation practice that is compatible with lay life.

One of our recent participants wrote: "I would like to express my thanks and gratitude to you. Although I had been meditating for many years, I found the course enormously helpful in clarifying the nature and differences between the samatha and vipassana methods, and also the interdependence between them. I feel that, although I have along way to go, I have a better idea of the road map of the path ahead. Your daily comments have been extremely helpful, and I especially appreciate the balanced way you approach both the course itself and the many questions that participants direct at you."

The course takes place on our special website that offers daily material for each of the 90 days, interaction between participants and support from the tutor. Participants also have access to an audio supplement containing guided meditations and chants to support the online material. Our course is led by Andrew Quernmore, an experienced meditation teacher based in England. Andrew wrote our first course and he has led each course since then.

Application details and further information is available here:

http://www.vipassana.com/course/

Parisa

Our Parisa support and encouragement programme is for former course participants; if you have taken one or more of our online courses you are eligible to subscribe. We provide themed teachings each month, year round, and access to our latest course. Andrew is also available to respond to support requests.

http://www.vipassana.com/parisa/

Altruistic Joy

The Nature and Implications of Mudita

by L.R. Oates

Altruistic joy is one of the four “sublime states” of mind—friendliness, compassion, altruistic joy, and equanimity—which together form one related group among the various spiritual or physical exercises generally described as meditation or contemplation. These all have as their common aim the attainment of mental calm or equanimity, which is intended in turn to foster the development of liberating insight. “A still mind, like still water, yields a clear reflection of what is before it.” This is why this particular series ends with equanimity, but the route by which it is attained in this case is different from that traversed for the most of the other themes used as a focus for concentration.

The others, such as meditation on the breath, on death, on visual objects (kasina), or on the Buddha, the Doctrine, and the Order of the Enlightened One, are entirely concerned with the self-cultivation of the meditator. Most of these themes are abstract or inanimate, while the Buddha and the Order (in the strict sense applicable here) have transcended any power of ours to help or hinder them. So the only person concerned or affected in these forms of training is the meditator. It was doubtless to encourage those wrestling by these means with their own inner weakness or conflicts that the following verse of the Dhammapada was uttered:

"Let no one neglect his own task for the sake of another’s however great; let him, after he has discerned his own task, devote himself to his task." ( Dhp 166)

But if this were the whole story it would be difficult for such self-cultivation to serve in turn as a basis for the freedom from bondage to the self-concept, which is the main characteristic of the development of insight. Indeed, it was the recognition of the dangers of self-preoccupation, or self-righteousness, liable to arise in these often acute struggles for self-discipline, that impelled the more extreme exponents of the Pure Land school of Buddhism to abandon self-cultivation in favour of the less exacting path of reliance on the Buddha’s transforming grace. But the cultivation of the “sublime states” represents a less radical form of compensation which, while compatible with other practises, can help to broaden the meditator’s perspective in order to achieve a mode of equanimity which does not imply withdrawal into oneself or indifference to others.

The starting point here, of course, is on the ethical plane in the practise of generosity in practical ways (dana) which, in order to become interiorized and thereby go beyond mere outward form, must be grounded in an attitude of friendliness (metta) for all beings without distinction. Since this outlook implies the recognition that all beings are subject to joys and sorrows just as we are, it finds a natural development in sympathy—that is to say, compassion—for their sorrows and joy in their blessings.

The former of these seems much the easier to achieve, since it is possible to feel compassion for suffering even in the absence of any positive friendliness for the sufferer, whereas it is only possible to share genuinely in another’s joy if there is some element of true affection or friendliness present. This is perhaps why, on a much lower level of sensitivity, the reporting of news seems so heavily concentrated on the side of crimes and disasters, which are perhaps felt more likely to arouse interest than happier events and deeds. If the latter arouse any interest at all, it is likely to be spiced with envy or cynicism.

Not only does genuine joy in the prosperity of others require some element of affection; it requires this to be of a quite high order. A great deal of what passes for love is really aimed at mere emotional gratification on the part of the lover, for whom the “beloved” is little more than a prop for acting out some drama satisfying a purely subjective need—the beloved’s own needs being treated less seriously. Indeed, even apart from outright commercialization, a certain habit of bargaining with affections seems remarkably widespread, when one begins to take notice of it.

In the light of this, the ability to feel a genuine joy in another’s happiness, equal to one’s satisfaction with one’s own, represents a truly “sublime state.” So it is not surprising that in the history of Buddhism, which cultivated this attitude systematically, there arose an aspiration to share with others not only one’s material resources, but the spiritual resources described as merit. This aspiration follows naturally enough from the basic theory as to what merit is. Merit is the accumulation of tendencies resulting from enlightened deeds which, according to the law of moral causation (the law of karma), conduce to the future happiness of the doer.

"Here he is joyful, hereafter he is joyful, in both worlds the well-doer is joyful. “I have done good” is the thought that make him happy. Still greater is his joy when he goes to states of bliss."

If the doer is still in a state where only purely personal forms of satisfaction are possible, the fruits of merit can only take this form. But suppose he loves even one being so much that, if that being is in some state of deprivation, he can only be made happy by the improvement of that being’s lot, then the merit which is due to him can only take effect by benefiting him through that other’s welfare. The wider his altruism expands, so that purely personal gratifications no longer adequately satisfy him, the wider must be the range of the benefit which his own merit would need to bring to others if it is to fulfil its defined function of bringing happiness to him. At the same time, his altruistic tendencies will ensure that he will have vastly more merit due to him, so his resources will tend to become commensurate with the aspirations, for example, of Śantideva, when he says:

"May I be an alleviator of the sorrows of all beings and a divine medicine to those afflicted by disease. May I be the benefactor and bringer of peace to them until all their bodily ailments and mental tribulations are at the end."

The principle of the sharing or transference of merit, so much stressed in Mahayana Buddhism (though not unknown in Theravadin practises) is sometimes objected to by Western Buddhists because of a superficial resemblance to the Christian doctrine of atonement, which they have rejected. But the principles entailed are not really identical, since the Christian doctrine is based on an essential distinction between the roles of the Creator and the created, while the Buddhist sharing of merit arises from a combination of the definition of merit and of the nature of altruistic joy.

It has a further importance too, in that it anticipates the emancipation to be derived from insight into the emptiness of the self-concept, that is to say, awakening to the emptiness of the concepts “I” and “mine” in terms of ultimate truth. On this level, the description “mine” as applied to merit will finally be seen to be as inapplicable as in the case of any other assumed possession. This was already explicitly set out in one of the Buddha’s earliest discourses, “The Marks of the Not-self,” in which he taught his first five disciples to contemplate each of the five components of personality in the terms: “This is not mine; this I am not; this is not my self.” The fourth of these components is the aggregate of mental tendencies or activities, which include merit and demerit. Even on a lower plane than that of perfect insight, it can be seen that our deeds are not exclusively ours, because no one acts in absolute isolation, so that every act involves some stimulus or opportunity arising from activity of others. On the other hand, a too persistent insistence on the individual nature of merit can only impede the ultimate awakening to the Not-self.

This has some bearing, too, on the reason why friendliness, compassion, and altruistic joy are regarded as leading to an equanimity which does not imply an indifference to the joys and sorrows of others. In the absence of such a conclusion, the alternate sharing of joys and sorrows, like these emotions arising on one’s own account, would be as endless as the world-cycles which it is the Buddhist aspiration to transcend. The goal of the “divine states” is that the aspirant, who in process achieves the role of a Bodhisattva in a two-way empathy with others by his perfect sharing of their joys and sorrows, is in a position to radiate to them stability, which in turn will help them to be less subject to their own emotional vicissitudes. In this way, he and they are liberated together, each sustaining the other.

Source: From Metta, Vol. 12, No. 2

republished by BPS, Kandy, in Wheel No. 170 (excerpt). For Free Distribution.

The Vipassana Fellowship Newsletter is published about 10 times each year and is sent only on request and to previous participants of our courses. Vipassana Fellowship is an organisation dedicated to the dissemination of accurate and useful information on Buddhist meditation practices as found in the Theravada tradition. Our next mailing will be in February. Our site can be accessed via the vipassana.com and vipassana.org domains.